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Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy
He "lighted" a cigarette in the States would sound as though you were a non-English speaker grasping incorrectly and coming up with the wrong form. Even the least "bookish" among us would look down on that one.
I have a very dim recollection of having run across "burglarised" in print, and could swear the example was British! If one American said that to another it would seem comical - although "robbed" is far more common than "burgled" in the first place.
My parents' generation is used to listening to a lot of radio, where the time is always given in numbers - even in New York where they also give a sunset alert for Orthodox Jews on Fridays. My 73 year old mother would likely use numbers off an analog clock (always numbers from a digital one), except that for "quarter after" and "quarter of", and even those I'm not certain of unless I asked her as an experiment -- 18:30 would definitely be said by most of her cohorts as "six thirty".
Extending this to dates - in conversation, when asked one's birthday, in the U. K. does one expect to hear it spoken as "25th of May"?
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My American friends who come from Rhode Island but have lived nearly all their married lives in Florida always uses burgularis(z!)ed and I have seen it in the local papers whilst over there.
One othjer difference between American English and UK English is the that sometimes one sees surprized and at other times surprised. I an a very old ex university lecturer (engineer) and i am still confused and delighted by the wonderful differences in language that continue to crop up in everyday usage.